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TI: So let's go back to your mother. What was your mother's name?

NA: Masano.

TI: And she also came from Okayama, same place?

NA: Same place.

TI: So tell me a little bit about your mother. What was she like?

NA: Oh, she was tiny and very industrious. She was friendly with the neighbors, and the neighbors were one German family about... hundred yards would be three hundred feet away, lived across the street from us. And then Mr. Cairns also had Caucasians working for him, and that particular family was on the same block that our home was on. So Mom used to visit, between visiting that boss's Caucasian family that worked for him and the German lady, she learned how to cook. And so my mom was quite a baker, and a Caucasian-type of meal cooker, and she also knew how to make Japanese dish. In those days, every New Year's, the Japanese in Lindsay would make a feast, and each family would have sushi and all the other Japanese delicacies. And Mom used to singlehandedly make all that, and they would celebrate for about three or four days. Each Japanese family would visit the other Japanese family and just keep going around until they probably visited every family for New Year's, and Mom used to do all the preparation for Dad. So I can remember having all kinds of people coming over to our place to eat and my dad and myself, we used to go around to other families, and Mom used to be the only one that had to stay home and work, work, work.

TI: And so how many families were there in Lindsay, Japanese families?

NA: I would say fifteen to twenty Japanese American farmer families. And naturally, there was a Japanese chop suey house in town and then there was a Japanese grocery store. So they would be the two non-farmers. And we had Japanese school there, so we had a Japanese teacher, and he was a non-farmer. So most of the Japanese Americans in Lindsay were farmers.

TI: Okay, good. I'm going to ask you more questions about that later, but I want to go back to your mother. You said she had friends, German family friends, Caucasian? How did she communicate with them? Did she speak English to them?

NA: She could not speak English, so just how she communicated, that's a good question. But her English knowledge was just one-word sentence like "cake," "pie," "gravy," "hamburger." She couldn't say, "I know how to make a cake, she'd just say, "Cake." "Cake tsukurimasu." [Laughs]

TI: And so did she try to teach, like the German mother how to cook Japanese foods? Do you think she tried to do that at all?

NA: I would imagine my mom probably brought rice or something to them. There must have been some kind of a trade in between. Because for Mom to be able to make all those American dish, she must have spent a lot of time with the German lady. And I used to visit the German lady, too, while the husband was out working, so I didn't see him as often as the German lady. I used to go there by myself, and then she'd treat me to a piece of cake or something like that. I spent quite a few, quite a few hours over with a German lady, they had just one son, and by the time I was old enough to go visit her, he had a job and... I don't know if he even lived there. He might have lived elsewhere, he already had a job in town.

TI: Oh, that's a good story. I want to ask now about your father. And what was your father like?

NA: Oh, he was very industrious. Besides working for Mr. Cairns, he had to do a lot of irrigating, so that took up his summer. And then in between his irrigating, my dad started up a nursery business. And I guess it was known as Jack's Nursery, and he used to plant hundreds of orange nursery tree and sell them. And so he had a second income, and I'm quite sure that nursery business brought in more money than the money he received in wages from Mr. Cairns. And by that time, back in -- oh, like I said, my dad went after, went to marry my mother in 1914, and then in, after they came back, in 1915, they had their first two babies, they were twins. The first set were twins, firstborn, and then when the twins, in 1920 or '21, at the age of five or six, they were sent to Japan because Grandpa was over, I think, visiting, and he says, "Oh, let me take the twins to Japan," and so, and my sister, too, the oldest sister.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.